After Trump jumped on board with prison reform last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) relented in his opposition, and other Senate Republicans joined in overwhelmingly passing the First Step Act. Even as Trump has built a reservoir of goodwill with the GOP base, such goodwill is always finite. Trump can’t expect to constantly be cutting deals with Democrats on high-profile issues and expect the GOP base to remain so loyal. Indeed, there’s also no question that doing prison reform was much, much easier than something like immigration would be. (Though it’s worth noting that similar prison reform efforts failed in the Obama administration.)

Source: Washington Post December 19, 2018 19:04 UTC